ELECTRIC PULSATION IN DESMODIUM GYRANS. 405 
Hook.; indeed, the plant appears nearer C. compacta, Boott. 
It was in this plant that Boott found the rudiment of the axis 
within the utricle as noted by him. 
There is yet another C. Tolmiei in herb. Kew, viz. :— 
CAREX MICROSACCUS, sp. nova; spicis 4, terminali mascula, 
femineis 23 mm. latis; utriculis 1 mm. longis, globoso-trigonis, 
erostratis, minute glandulosis, etiamque a glandulis magnis rubris 
remote inspersis. 
Habitat. Japan ? 
This is “n. 985” in herb. Kew, perhaps collected by Wilford 
in Japan or Korea, and was referred in herb. Kew to C. Tolmiei 
(possibly by Boott). It seems to me near C. bidentula, Franchet, 
rather than to C. Tolmiez. 
In this species, as in the three preceding, F have looked 
through the North-west American and the North-east Asian 
without being able to find any plant that fairly matches it. 
On the Electric Pulsation accompanying Automatic Movements 
in Desmodium gyrans, DC. By Prof. Jacapis CHUNDER 
Bossz, C.L.E., M.A., D.Sc. (Communicated by the Presi- 
dent.) 
[Read 19th February, 1903.] 
In my paper on the “ Electric Response of Ordinary Plants under 
Mechanical Stimulus,” read before the Linnean Society (Journ., 
Bot. xxxv. 1902, pp. 275-304), I have shown how, in response to 
an external stimulus, an electric pulsation is produced in a non- 
motile and apparently insensitive plant-organ. In these cases 
the molecular changes due to stimulus are revealed, not by any 
visible movement, but by electromotive changes. We have 
again plants which exhibit very marked mechanical response, as 
seen in sensitive plants; the responses, however, being evoked 
by the action of an external stimulus. Still more wonderful are 
the automatic movements exhibited by certain plants by the 
action of some periodic internal stimuli. Of these, the auto- 
nomic variation-movement of the lateral leaflets of Desmodium 
. _ : cnown, exhibit 
gyrans is a striking example. These, as 18 well oe exl 
. 
I 
